


Take My Hand

by Neyiea



Series: But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene [8]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: A moderate amount of crying, Hurt/Comfort, I have written a lot for this and now I must rest, M/M, Reunions, Separations, Series Finale, i'm sorry???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26680735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: “You? Bruce, you’re tooimportantand have too manyconnectionsto be put into a place as clearly corrupted as Arkham is. They’d send you away."The unthinkable happens.But being separated cannot stop true love, all it can do is delay it for a while.
Relationships: Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne
Series: But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1472327
Comments: 18
Kudos: 120





	Take My Hand

**Author's Note:**

> _Okay. So._ Back when I was still writing Birthday Bash I was actually planning on doing multiple endings for this series because I just could not decide on light/dark/neutral Bruce as an endgame. But even if I love this series to death I am currently Very Tired and truly do not think I'd be able to finish the other endings because even the last few pages of this took me a small eternity. Uhh, sorry that the most emotional one is the one that actually got finished??? It's not sad for long I promise, I hate writing my boys being sad.
> 
> It's been a _long_ time since I've written _this many words_ for a single idea though, so thank you Valeyne for proving that my attention span can focus on writing one story for almost 90K.
> 
> As an aside: if y'all are interested in the unfinished alternate endings I'd be willing to put those up as long as I don't get any 'please finish this' comments because, my dudes, my friends, if I had the energy to finish them I definitely would have. My Hell Brain can only focus on one thing for so long. I will always love Valeyne and I have more ideas for other (shorter) works, but this fic does need to end eventually and today is that day. 
> 
> Much love!
> 
> xoxo

It didn’t take a slip-up during a live broadcast. It didn’t take a cop bursting in a little too early during a kidnapping that wasn’t. It didn’t take one of the few people who Bruce regarded as a friend or family in his life becoming concerned that he was withdrawing or acting unusual. 

It was all just wrong place, wrong time, an eyewitness testimony, and a blurry digital photo that was meant to be published in the Gotham Gazette a week afterwards to explain the possible reason for the sudden disappearance of Bruce Wayne, had it not been for the threat of a business-destroying lawsuit and an interview with his guardian explaining that Bruce had decided to attend a university overseas, away from the chaos that so often consumed Gotham.

Bruce didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to anyone except for Alfred. 

Maybe it was meant to be a kindness, because even that had shattered his heart to pieces.

There was no disappointment, no anger, no rage. Just a sorrow so thick that Bruce felt he would choke on it. 

“I wish I had protected you from him,” Alfred whispered in his ear as he held Bruce tightly. So tightly it reminded Bruce of the night his parents were killed, back when Alfred was the only person that he had left that meant anything. Bruce had dug his fingers into the back of his shirt, trembling just as much as he had on that awful night nearly a decade prior. “I wish I’d known.” His arms had wrapped tighter, and Bruce could hardly breathe through the constriction and his tears and his panicked, shallow inhalations. Fear seized his chest and left him frozen. “I wish I’d killed him on the night the lights went out.”

And then, under the cover of darkness, Bruce was pulled away from everything and everyone he’d ever loved.

He can’t remember the trip away from Gotham to a distant airport, in the aftermath all he is left with is feelings. Agony and heartbreak so acute it that shredded him up inside like vile, clawed hands were attempting to dig into him to rip out his heart. Emptiness and helplessness like he’d only ever felt once before. He was left wild and desperate; every moment that passed leaving him spinning further into despair, completely out of control.

He cannot remember dislocating his thumb to attempt to get the cuffs off, he cannot remember the cuffs being re-applied even tighter, he cannot remember screaming until his throat was raw, he cannot remember the broken sobs that became more and more frequent until that was the only sound he could make.

He can remember wishing, wishing, wishing that Jerome would come and steal him like he was so fond of doing. Cause a car accident or an explosion or gun down the people trying to take Bruce away.

But everything happens too swiftly and secretly, and Bruce’s trail has gone cold by the time Jerome learns—through his own particular type of business-destroying threats immediately after an article about Bruce Wayne’s decision to go to university is published—that they’d been discovered, and that Bruce had been taken. 

x-x-x

Breaking into the Gotham Gazette midday had been easy, but Jerome hadn’t felt particularly victorious or well-humored by it. The second he’d skimmed over the article—Bruce wouldn’t ever leave without saying goodbye; not even if it was to take a trip to a nearby city, not even if it was to go off and learn some of those new tricks and skills he was so fond of collecting, and definitely not to go to university overseas—he’d concocted a scheme. Quick and messy with absolutely no flare, just a wave of violent brutality that he didn’t feel the desire to laugh about. Even his Maniax could tell something was wrong before he’d cornered the one responsible for the article, dragging them into the editor’s office for answers.

Crying and sobbing and begging for mercy, a digital file presented to him with the promise that it was the only copy because the one who’d taken the photo had deleted the original once it had been handed over. That wasn’t what Jerome cared about, Jerome cared about Where. The fuck. Bruce Wayne was. And he didn’t know what the fuck a photo had to do with anything.

“It’s of you,” rasped the editor. “It’s of you both. Someone saw you together. The story about the university is a cover-up. He’s gone.”

“No.” He could hardly recognize the sound of his own voice. He could hardly even hear it over the swiftly rising panic. He hadn’t felt so afraid, so helpless, since he was a child. “You’re lying. You know where he is. Tell me where he is.”

They couldn’t say. Jerome—

—destroyed the office; threw over the desk, kicked the chairs, smashed framed photos against the wall, threw a weighty award straight out of a window and nothing, nothing, nothing made him feel better—

Jerome needed to kill them, but it wasn’t enough to kill _only_ them. He got the name of the person who’d taken the photo, too, then he ended their lives quicker than they deserved, then he—

—wished, wished, wished that this was all just an awful nightmare. He would wake up and Bruce would be there and Bruce would shush him gently because Jerome could feel some awful, broken sound building up in the back of his throat and Bruce would hold him and everything would be okay—

—set the entire building on fire.

Jerome watched the flames consume everything. He stayed and he watched and he felt empty, as if he’d lost an actual, physical piece of himself. 

He breathed.

His hands began to shake.

He breathed.

He felt something inside of him crumble.

He tried to breathe, but he choked instead; the first of many sobs getting caught in his throat.

He covered his wet face with his hands and screamed. 

x-x-x

Time drags ever forward.

The hurt doesn’t come to an end, it merely rises and falls in tandem with loneliness. It is a vicious cycle that is still strong enough that Bruce feels powerless when the feelings peak, and if he could get away with it he would lay in bed all day; shallow breathing and glossy eyes giving too much of his turmoil away. But he cannot sit idle, he cannot afford to, not when he knows that he’s being watched; assessed; examined. Not when he knows that staying in bed all day will be something that he’ll be forced to talk about. He’d rather go about his new normal pretending that he was recovering than speak to anyone about the crushing weight in his chest and the whys behind it. 

Bruce’s life is all a strict routine, nowadays.

It has been for the past year. 

In the mornings he wakes up, he goes to the dining room, he takes his few medications without complaint. He eats and has his mental health assessed by the day nurse, and three times a week he attends therapy where his life story is steadily being chipped, chipped, chipped away. There are things he keeps secret—The Court of Owls, The League of Shadows, Ra’s al Ghul—because those stories would not be believed, and he doesn’t want ‘delusions of grandeur’, or even just ‘delusions’ of any kind added into his files. Those instances are not what phycologists and psychiatrists and behavioral therapists want to talk to him about, anyway. Month by month, slowly—because he lingers on certain things for as long as he can before being forced to move onward—more and more about him is found out. 

In the afternoons he goes to the dining room; he makes small talk, he eats, he doesn’t have any lunchtime medications so the nurses mostly leave him alone as long as they can see him from behind their computer monitors as they chart inside the shatter-proof glass confines of the nursing station. Attached to the dining room through a set of glass double-doors there is an enclosed patio with two security cameras and high walls that he could easily climb if he tried, though he wouldn’t make it far on foot before getting caught, and he goes out there on rare gloomy days because the grey skies and misty rain remind him of home. He goes to group activities, sometimes, but he misses his old hobbies, he misses his old life, he misses, misses, misses but absolutely refuses to go into detail about it. Walking on rooftops, fighting crime, gathering information on known Arkham escapees, and preparing to become something like a hero—or maybe more accurately; something like a vigilante—wasn’t a sensible pastime for anyone, especially not one with such a close connection to a very well-known criminal. 

It’s almost funny, how many true things about himself that he holds back from saying because he knows that no one will believe him. 

In the evenings he eats and spends time alone. He mostly stays in the common areas, because he’d learned quickly that patients secluding themselves in their rooms for too long was seen as avoidant or suspicious, and really only lead to more conversation because the staff would be prompted to purposefully seek them out. They only play local channels with local news, and they track the internet history of every patient. He tried to look up ‘Gotham’ once at the very beginning, but the word had been blocked, and he hadn’t had the heart to try any of the other words or names that might give him updates about what he wants to know. 

He calls Alfred at the same time every night, and he doesn’t even cry every time that he hears his guardian’s voice like he did for the first several months, or like the handful of times that Alfred has traveled to visit him in-person. Sometimes he thinks Alfred might still be crying, but his heart is much too broken to risk it being ground to dust by asking. They manage to speak for half an hour every night without Bruce learning any significant developments about the people and places that he was torn away from. 

They never, never talk about Jerome. 

When he hangs up he feels a strange mixture of wistful—happy that Alfred still cared so much for him despite everything that Bruce had lied to him about over the years—and empty. He has his mental health assessed by the night nurse, and he takes his single medication before bed. 

He has a private room, curtesy of the amount of money Alfred was shelling out, and the nurses do their nightly rounds every hour on the hour, like clockwork. A few times a week he trains between being checked on, because he cannot stand the stillness and lack of activity, here, but his heart just isn’t as into it as it used to be. He couldn’t fight in the name of justice, here. He couldn’t help anyone, here. He couldn’t do anything, here. There is so much he cannot do. There is so much that has been taken from him. There is nothing he can do but follow his new routine and hope that someday things will become more tolerable. 

It makes his heart ache. 

He wakes up, he takes him meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds—

Bruce knows that, truly, the people here only want to help him. He knows that, but it doesn’t make it any easier. He thinks he might be going crazier here than he would have gone if he’d been left alone. Jerome brought out the worst in him, yes, but spending time with him had never made Bruce feel—distantly, never concretely, with no actual plans to make it happen, at least not yet—that maybe it would be easier if he just ceased to exist. 

He wakes up, he takes him meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds—

He hasn’t felt this trapped since the last time he was forced away from home by The Court of Owls. His homecoming afterwards had been a terrible thing, full of death and madness, but at least he’d _come home_. He doesn’t know if that will happen for him, this time, even if Alfred assures him that someday he’ll be well enough again, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be ‘well enough’.

He wakes up, he takes his meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds. He wakes up, he takes his meds—

Until something breaks the cycle into splintering pieces.

Like gunshots in an alley. Like glass shattering. Like shards of a mirror. 

Like a waking up after a night where you were almost killed to find the person who nearly murdered you, and who you nearly murdered in retaliation for unspeakable sins, was presenting you a makeshift weapon to commemorate your first date by and demanding a goodnight kiss.

There’s a small slip of paper in the bottom of the med cup.

He unfolds it with shaking fingers. 

He reads it.

For the first time in a long, long time his heart flutters in a familiar way. 

He goes to therapy, he makes progress, he’s everyone’s favourite patient. He settled quickly, and he never made any trouble because he’d known it would be futile, and he spends a perfect amount of time with other patients and a perfect amount of time alone because he’d learned what the perfect amounts of time were by watching everyone else around him. He’s a star. He’s a victim. He starts allowing himself to show more of the vulnerability that he’s constantly felt ever since being taken away. No one blames him for falling under the sway of a cult leader while he was underage. No one blames him for anything because, they whisper amongst themselves in the hallway when they think he can’t hear him, what could you expect when someone with a personal history like his was raised in a place as notorious as Gotham?

He’s making progress. They talk about moving him to a lower security unit where he’ll have privileges to go outside—actually outside, not a walled patio—for a small amount of time unaccompanied. 

He’s making progress.

Or at least, they believe that he is.

He knows what they want from him. He knows what they want to see. He knows because he’s been watching. Ever pragmatic, and sure that such a big secret could not be kept forever no matter how hard the both of them tried, he’d attempted to prepare himself for the possibility of this happening. He hates that it happened, it breaks his heart that it happened, but he’d done what he thought was necessary. He’d come here against his will, but he hadn’t let himself throw fits or scream at staff. He’d been on his best behaviour, and he’d learned what to do and what not to do by watching everyone around him. 

He wonders if Jerome had been preparing for it, too, or if he’d been left scrambling in the aftermath of Bruce’s absence. 

Thinking of that, thinking of what Jerome must have felt when he realized that Bruce was gone—pulled out of his reach, away from the place where he held power and influence—makes his heart ache anew. 

Whenever one particular nurse has him as a patient there are slips of paper in the bottom of his med cups. She started working at this facility years before Bruce came here, and she’s never mentioned anything about Gotham. From what Bruce can tell she has absolutely no connection to the city that Bruce thinks of as home. 

He reads the little notes—typed, not handwritten, like fortunes from a fortune cookie—and he gets rid of them—slipping them into a cup of water and letting the paper and ink turn to nothing—because he cannot afford to keep them. He wishes he could, but if they were found he is sure that he’d be moved somewhere else in secret, and if he’s moved a second time…

He dreads to think of what would happen, if he was moved a second time. 

He memorizes the notes, instead.

_I found you, darlin’. You knew I would, didn’t you? I’d never leave you alone._

_I’d tear this world to pieces to find you._

_There’s nowhere you could be hidden away that I wouldn’t be able to reach._

_I miss you. I love you. I’ve got a plan._

_It’s taking longer than I thought, but it’s all coming together, baby doll._

He wakes up, he takes his meds, he reads secret messages. 

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

I love you too, Bruce thinks, blinking back tears as he destroys the note. I love you too.

Alfred mentions, once, that Bruce sounds happier. Bruce attributes it to the possibility of being moved to a lower security unit, the lie stuttering uneasily over his tongue. He feels guilty for the falsehood. He hopes that Alfred will forgive him for one more lie of omission. 

A countdown starts.

_18_ , says one little note. It’s handwritten. Bruce wonders if that means Jerome is near enough to be giving the nurse the papers himself, and he feels so dizzy with the thought that he fakes feeling ill for the first time since he arrived and spends the rest of the day in his bed, mind racing. 

_11_ , says another slip of paper, just a little under two weeks before the anniversary of the night the lights in Gotham went out. Bruce keeps his face impassive as he figures out the date, but later that night he hides a smile into his pillow and lets out a soft laugh. 

So sentimental. 

_5_ , it says on the day this particular nurse has him as a patient again. She seems nice; always asking with a soothing, maternal sort of tone whether or not Bruce was having any thoughts of hurting himself. He wonders if she ever reports directly to Jerome, or if there’s a huge line of people which connect them to each other; like in a game of telephone. 

Her work rotation ends, and Bruce overhears the day before the countdown reaches zero that she’s called in sick for her next three shifts. 

Bruce wakes up—

And it’s as if he can feel something in the air has changed. 

Before everyone even has a chance to make it to the dining room for breakfast one of his co-patients, a girl even younger than he is, is becoming increasingly verbally aggressive to staff as she exit-seeks. She doesn’t respond to re-direction, she throws one of the chairs in the dining room when the nurses try to de-escalate her. A Code White is called over the speakers, directing security and more staff to the locked unit that Bruce is on while her assigned nurse runs to the med-room.

The rush of new people has only just arrived when a Code White on another unit is called.

And another.

And another.

On every unit. 

His co-patient, the start of the storm, manages to catch his gaze as one nurse holds her hands while another administers an intramuscular medication. She winks.

Bruce hadn’t been the only one getting slips of paper in his med cups.

The staff fracture apart, scrambling, spread too thin to properly deal with everything at once. They start ordering the patients who are out to go back to their rooms, and that is when Bruce hears the distant roar of something being blown to pieces. 

Alarms start ringing.

Code Red—fire—Code Green—evacuation—Code Silver—an armed person—are called and called, on units all throughout the building. It culminates with a Code Purple—hostage taking, and then the speaker system crackles and dies.

Everything has fallen into chaos in the span of less than ten minutes. 

Bruce backs away from the dining room, one hand pressed over his mouth not out of shock, but to hide his smile. 

The glass at his back—the set of double-doors showcasing the enclosed patio—shatters.

People with concealed faces and weapons start storming in, the first two go around Bruce as if he were a stone in a river—he distantly thinks that such actions will make everything obvious when police go over security footage later, but then—

There is an arm across his shoulders, a chest at his back, a blade at his neck. Three more people stream past him into the locked unit, grabbing onto anyone within reach. He is quickly drawn backwards, into the early morning sun, and he realizes—

It’s not a blade at his neck.

It’s a shard of mirror.

His breath hitches. His eyes flood with tears. He can’t seem to speak.

“I told you, didn’t I,” the dearest voice, the sweetest voice, the most important voice whispers as he’s dragged past the now-crumbled wall that had once enclosed the closest thing to freedom that Bruce had been allowed. “There’s nowhere you could go where I wouldn’t find you.”

They twist, and in the blurred smudges of his peripheral vision Bruce sees black vans lined up around the building, much like the van he is facing now. Exact replicas. Once he’s inside he’ll just be one of many hostages, all being stolen away and splitting into every direction.

His knees buckle—much, much later he will feel embarrassed for swooning so obviously—but he’s caught up in familiar arms, hoisted inside the enclosed back of the van, and as soon as the door shuts the driver floors it. The force makes Bruce tumble back, but hands dart forward to grip his shoulders before he slams against the doors. With the driver up in their own compartment Bruce is knelt on the floor of a getaway van, alone with the only person in the world who would fully realize the significance of a simple shard of a mirror. 

He feels like he’s choking; too many emotions, too many words, too many things to process. Everything is blocking his throat and making it impossible to breathe. It’s not until the black ski mask is removed and Bruce catches sight of familiar scars, familiar lips, familiar eyes, that the tension winding inside of him breaks.

He can finally breathe again, and the first thing he is able to do after drawing in a full breath is start crying; heaving sobs that he hasn’t cried since he was first taken away.

“Shhh, shhh.” Gloved, shaking hands cup his face, wiping ineffectually at the streams of tears that Bruce can’t stem the flow of. Jerome looks even wilder than he used to, but his eyes, when they gaze at Bruce, are still the same. Soft in a way he never was with anyone or anything else. Loving. “Bruce.” There’s a tremor in his voice that hadn’t been there before, much like how his hands had been steady when they’d held a shard of mirror to Bruce’s neck. The adrenalin from the break-in is starting to wear away, and with it is any levelheadedness that Jerome might have needed for his plan to go off without a hitch. “I’m here.”

“Jerome,” he rasps, almost not able to believe he’s able to say the name out loud without having to suffer through a dissecting look. “Jerome,” he says again, voice cracking. He rushes forward to wrap his arms around Jerome’s waist and tightly tucks his wet face into the crook of Jerome’s neck as his entire body begins to tremble. “You came,” he manages to get out through the surge of emotions violently welling up and spilling over. 

One hand settles in his hair, another draws up and down his spine. Jerome turns to press a soft, lingering kiss to his temple—reverent, as if the simple action is something that Jerome has dreamt about—and Bruce can’t seem to stop weeping all over him.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Jerome says, voice hushed as he holds Bruce close. “Had to find you, which took ages since I knew you wouldn’t forgive me if I maimed the butler for information, and then I had to get powerful enough to infiltrate this place and manage to pull this scheme off.”

“You came,” Bruce tells him again, breath hitching in his throat as he tries and fails to start calming down. “Sometimes I felt as if I would never see you again.”

Jerome holds him even tighter, almost enough to bruise. The pressure—the undeniable feel of him right with Bruce, where he ought to be—is enough for Bruce’s sobs to finally start subsiding into something slightly less frantic. 

“I’d never let that happen,” Jerome tells him firmly. “I’d never give up on you, baby doll. You’re mine, and I’m yours.”

“I know.” Bruce presses his lips to the tear-slick skin of Jerome’s neck. “I understand. You’re my destiny.” 

“And you’re mine,” Jerome states, heartfelt. “I cheated fate to make sure of it, remember?”

Bruce can feel himself start to smile, although it is slight and watery with fresh tears dripping down his face and emotional whimpers still occasionally falling from his mouth, and he slowly beings to pull back. He raises his hands to Jerome’s face, fingers grazing over the rough, raised tissue that extended his eternal grin. It’s been so long since he’s traced this smile. He’s missed tracing this smile. He’s missed Jerome every hour of every day. 

“I remember, Jay.” 

Jerome eagerly leans into his hands, eyes drifting-half shut as he looks at Bruce as if he wants to memorize him all over again. He appears unspeakably tired but incredibly content, like he’d be happy to do nothing but stare at Bruce for an eternity. Bruce knows how awful it had been for himself to get taken away, but he’s not sure how Jerome dealt with his sudden disappearance. It physically hurts to think about; his chest aches at the mere suggestion of Jerome not understanding, not knowing, not being sure of anything until it was far too late for him to act. 

“I missed you, Bruce,” he whispers. His own eyes are glossy in a way that makes Bruce’s entire heart feel like it’s being pierced by needles. 

“I missed you too.” Bruce’s thumbs skim the dark shadows underneath Jerome’s wet eyes. “More than anything.”

Jerome ducks down to kiss him, and Bruce’s breath catches again at the electric feeling of it.

He hasn’t been kissed since the last time they kissed; long ago, far away.

So far away. Too far away. 

Bruce’s chest fills with a longing that he’s tried to suppress for more than a year, the impossibility of the notion always leaving him miserable, and he leans up to shower soft kisses across the entire extended line of Jerome’s mouth.

“Jerome,” he whispers, lips brushing against scars. “Take me home,” he pleads between kisses. “I want to go home, please, please.” He pulls back. 

He doesn’t just want gloomy days with misty rain. He wants Gotham. 

“It won’t be the same as when you left,” Jerome tells him, voice gentle, on the verge of being apologetic. Whatever Gotham has become in Bruce’s extended absence, he wasn’t particularly proud of it. “Gotham is practically in ruins, darlin’. It’s an absolute madhouse. Once you were taken things began to topple so much easier than before. It’s as if…” His tone becomes something wistful, and he presses gentle kisses to Bruce’s damp cheeks. “You were the only good thing left in the city capable of hanging on to the light inside of you. One beacon in the darkness. With you gone… Nothing was the same, and I needed more followers, more power, in order to find you, so I took advantage of every weakness I could find just like every other crook in the city. I don’t know if Gotham will ever fully recover from what’s been done to it.”

“I don’t care if it’s different.” He might have, once, but not anymore. “It’s home. It’s _our_ home.”

It was home whether it was in ruins or not. Ruins could be fixed. New foundations could be laid. Gotham was the only place in the world that Bruce could ever think of as home. 

“I know, darlin’, I know. I’ll take you back to Gotham, I promise.” Jerome runs a hand through Bruce’s hair, unable to stop touching him, as if Bruce is moments away from being taken again. As if Jerome couldn’t bear to part with him for a second. “Once you’re back maybe things will start changing for the better; stranger things have happened before. And you—you always were Gotham’s only hero. You were—you were the only one who ever—” Jerome breathes deeply, sounding like he’s trying to bite back tears, and Bruce feels a heartache so acute he wonders if something is actually physically wrong with him. 

“I’ll take you back,” Jerome tells him again. “It’s going to take some time to return, though. Had to orchestrate kidnappings and ransom calls for a whole lot of people to keep it from being obvious that it was you I was after, but people are still going to be on the lookout for you. We’ve got to lay low for a while. Just a little while. And I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“Promise?”

Bruce’s voice is small; frail to his own ears. He can hear Jerome’s breath catch in his throat.

“I promise, Bruce, I promise,” Jerome vows, pressing kisses to the corners of Bruce’s eyes, to his forehead, to his cheeks. “I never want to leave you alone again. There were so many times, before, where I wanted to make you stay with me whether you wanted to stay or not, but I always let you slip through my fingers.” His arms circle tight around Bruce’s waist. “I won’t let you leave again.”

“I never want to leave again.” He doesn’t think he could stand it. “I want to stay with you.”

“I’m glad we agree.” Jerome presses their foreheads together. “My perfect little match,” he coos, fond, but there’s a faint tremor as the familiar epithet is uttered. “We always were so alike, you and me.” 

Bruce’s breath hitches, pleasant sparks running through him at a resurgence of memories which had, at times, been too painful to think about.

“I’m not the same as I was,” he whispers, “the last time that we were together.”

“No,” Jerome agrees. “You survived being taken away, you survived being isolated from everything and everyone you ever cared about, you survived people finding out all about us and wanting to drag even more information out of you. Brucie, baby, love of my life, you’re even stronger than you were before.”

Bruce doesn’t feel stronger. Sometimes Bruce feels like a shadow of who he used to be. 

But Jerome is looking at him with that same devoted gaze, so maybe he hasn’t actually become weaker. Maybe he was just left feeling weak as he was forced to bend himself into something that wouldn’t attract attention. An ideal patient. A star. A victim.

“I’m not the same as I was, either,” Jerome tells him lowly, pulling back a few inches. “Losing you pushed me off of an edge I didn’t even realize I was on, and I destroyed everything I touched on the way down.” He lifts his hand, thumb gently trailing across the small, faint scar extending the curve of Bruce’s smile. Bruce presses against his hand, feeling fluttery and so, so incredibly in love. “I’ve spread madness like a virus, even beyond the borders of Gotham.”

“You always were so good at bringing out the worst in everyone,” Bruce whispers, feeling more fond than anything.

“What good was bringing out the dark in everyone if I didn’t have you with me?”

Bruce’s heart twinges and he can’t stop himself from surging forward, wrapping his arms around Jerome’s shoulders and sliding their lips together. Jerome is quick to respond, pulling Bruce even closer, mouth falling open, kiss becoming sloppy and desperate. Bruce edges further and further into Jerome’s space, letting his lips part at the first electric brush of Jerome’s tongue. Jerome makes a low sound in his throat as he pushes inside, and Bruce’s blood begins to rush in a familiar, much loved way. His hands scrabble against Jerome’s back, he pants against Jerome’s mouth, he loses himself in the act of kissing him. It’s so much, so good, after so long of nothing. After so long of no Jerome. After so long with only memories to sustain him. Bruce presses, presses, desperate for anything and everything and Jerome, Jerome, Jerome. 

One of Jerome’s thighs nudges in between his legs. It doesn’t even press up against the junction of his thighs, just barely grazing higher than Bruce’s knees, but the feeling is so well known to him that Bruce’s heart stutters and he breaks the kiss, ducking his head into the crook of Jerome’s neck and feeling himself go instantly hot. The floor of the van is getting painful to kneel on top of and he’s unsteady from the vehicle’s movement and he has no idea how long it’s going to take for them to get where they’re going but Jerome is here, he’s here, he’s here—

“I am,” Jerome tells him softly, and Bruce belatedly realizes that he’s started speaking out loud, too caught up in Jerome to pay much attention to himself. “I’m right here Bruce, right here. Look at me, darlin’, please.”

Bruce does. He feels tightly wound, and like he’s still not really processing the entirety of what has happened, but Jerome is here and Bruce loves him, and Bruce remembers hazily that he’d really only ever told Jerome that a few times, when he was too emotional to hold it back.

He’d regretted not saying it more.

“I love you, Jerome,” he says. It trips over his tongue and into the air, and it’s so easy to say, and so worth saying. “I love you,” he repeats, watching Jerome’s face flush, watching his smile widen, watching his eyes spark. “I love you.”

Jerome kisses him, his hands settle low on Bruce’s back and reel him in. 

“I know you do,” Jerome tells him. “I always knew. I love you too, Bruce. More than anything. More than spreading madness and making ruins and bringing out your dark side. Even if that’s what caught my attention at first I’ve always loved both sides of you, Bruce, I just never wanted to admit it to you.”

“Kiss me again,” Bruce implores. “Keep kissing me, please. I missed you, I missed you.”

Jerome seals their lips together and Bruce feels heat spark under his skin. He wants, he needs, he wants—

“We have to change cars soon,” Jerome says between kisses. “Can’t make the rest of the journey in the same van that everyone’s going to be looking for. I’m going to take such good care of you once we’re somewhere safe, Bruce, and I won’t leave you alone ever again, I promise, but we have to be ready to jump out of the back, okay?”

“Okay,” Bruce agrees, something like excitement curling within him. “I’m ready for anything as long as I’m with you.”

Jerome makes a high, strained sound. He presses a firm kiss to Bruce’s forehead before he moves to stand, Bruce following his lead.

Jerome’s hand rests upon the door handle. His head tilts. Bruce catches a glimpse of an earpiece in his ear, and then he looks at Bruce and smiles wide, reaching out to grab tightly onto Bruce’s hand.

“Almost there,” he says, eyes lit up with something beautiful and frenzied. “Five. Four. Three. Two.”

The van begins to slow without actually breaking, Jerome flings open the door, he and Bruce leap out, the van continues on without them.

They’re under a bridge, and just as the van disappears a different car comes in from the opposite direction. It stops just in front of them, the driver jumps out, and Bruce doesn’t need any prompting to get into the passenger’s seat as quickly as possible.

The stunt under the bridge takes less than a minute, and then they’re in a car that no one will be looking for, and Bruce can watch the scenery pass him by in a way that he hasn’t been able to for more than a year, and his heart is so full and he’s so happy that he feels tears sting his eyes again. He rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, wishing that they would just stop already.

He’d thought he didn’t have any tears left to cry any more, but he supposes the tears from before had all been tears of sadness.

He’s not sure how long it will take for him to run out of tears of happiness. 

Jerome’s right hand reaches out to him and Bruce grips onto it tightly, bringing it up to his mouth to plant a kiss along the back. 

“This feels like a dream, even though I had all of your love-notes to prepare me for it,” he whispers. “I can’t—I can’t believe you kidnapped me with a piece of mirror.” He thinks he might actually laugh about that, later, once he’s able to sort out everything that’s happened in the past half hour. 

“It’s our anniversary, Bruce, I’m allowed to get sentimental when celebrating our most important day. Once I finally—” Jerome’s voice cracks, and Bruce feels yet another sharp pain at the open vulnerability. “Finally knew where you were I set the date so that I would have a concrete goal to strive towards. If I’d been a few days later I guess it wouldn’t have mattered, but I just… It felt right, to aim to reunite with you on the same date that I began to realize so many important things. It felt—” His fingers twitch. “—like I was finally stacking the deck in my favour again after so long. Like I couldn’t possibly lose, as long as I did it today.”

“You look tired,” Bruce says, he can’t quite bring himself to tell Jerome that he shouldn’t have worked so hard, though. He’s glad that Jerome had worked as hard as he did. He squeezes Jerome’s hand tighter, maybe tight enough to hurt, but Jerome doesn’t draw back. “You look tired, Jay,” he says again, voice just as watery as his eyes. 

“I was too keyed up to sleep last night.”

It looks like more than just one night’s worth of lost sleep, but Bruce doesn’t say that and presses a kiss to his hand again instead.

The landscape around them begins to change; opens spaces shifting into rural communities shifting into the beginnings of an urban scrawl. Bruce finds himself sinking back into his seat, clenching Jerome’s hand, consumed with a worry that they’ll be found, Bruce will be taken, and Jerome won’t ever be able to find him again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’ll be safe where we’re going.”

“How safe?” How could anywhere be safe until they reached the place where Jerome and Bruce were both at their strongest? His home. _Their home._ Their beginning. Their origin point. 

“Someone gave the green light to this location after aggressively vetoing just about everywhere else I thought about. Everyone who inhabits the place now is either one of mine or one of his. I trust that it’s safe. You’d trust it, too, if you knew who endorsed it.”

Bruce’s near-overwhelming worry is briefly overtaken by surprise; because for Jerome to trust an opinion that was neither his own nor Bruce’s is something that Bruce hadn’t even considered to be a possibility. 

“Who?”

Jerome’s eyes dart over to him briefly before returning to the road ahead. His fingers grip Bruce’s hand tight. 

“Who would know better about hiding away than someone who hid away for fifteen years?”

“Jeremiah?” Just saying the name feels like a shock. “You and Jeremiah are working together?”

He can hardly believe it, but then again he can hardly believe that any of this is happening at all. If he had a history of vivid dreams he’d have pinched himself the moment that he saw a shard of mirror at his throat instead of a knife. 

“You’re his only friend, Bruce. He… He’s not the same as he used to be, either, and I hate to admit it, especially since he’ll brag to you about it once he’s done weeping all over you, but he’s actually been helpful. I’ve gotta—” Jerome’s fingers twitch and his expression shifts for a moment to something that makes Bruce’s breath catch fitfully. “I need my hand back, just for a sec. I’ve got a turn coming up.”

It takes more effort than he would have thought to loosen his fingers. Both of Jerome’s hands are on the wheel for less than thirty seconds altogether, but it feels like an eternity until their fingers are threading together once again and Jerome is pressing his rough lips to the back of Bruce’s hand. 

“You remember those generators you guys built with your money? Turns out that they can also make excellent bombs. Easy to transport, easy to carry, easy to make bank off of in a city with as many rich scumbag villain-wannabes as Gotham. They bought them off of Jeremiah, but weren’t expecting them to get stolen by me.” More than a year ago Bruce might have felt appalled that a project he’d put his faith into due to the good that it would do for his city had been twisted into something that could be used for destruction, but if that destructive nature had played a part in his finally reuniting with Jerome again… “I don’t like upstarts in our city. Criminals these days just don’t have what it takes to make an impact.”

“No one’s ever made an impact like you,” Bruce breathes, and Jerome flushes before pressing another kiss to Bruce’s hand.

“Those bombs were also really, really easy to set up and blast through the final set of walls keeping you away from me before security had a chance to get suspicious.”

“And to think that you hated me and Jeremiah working together so much.” A subdued smile is tugging at Bruce’s mouth. “I can’t believe that when I was gone—” His voice is weak again. He feels exhausted with the weight of constant, fluctuating emotion. “—you two worked things out.”

“We… We were still family after all, I guess. We still knew each other, even after all those years apart.” Jerome doesn’t let go of Bruce’s hand as he turns the wheel this time, Bruce tugging forward in his seat with the motion. The car begins to slow to a stop. “But us. You and me. We’re family, too. Bruce, you—you’re _my_ family. The family that I _chose._ I—” Bruce watches, fascinated and heartbroken in equal parts, as a tear begins to roll down Jerome’s face. “I missed you so fucking much. I can’t—I can’t even put it into words, that’s how _much_ I felt.”

Bruce scrambles to undo his seatbelt one-handed and presses into Jerome’s space, tucking Jerome’s head into the crook of his neck. Jerome’s hands fist tightly into the back of Bruce’s shirt as his shoulders begin to shake, uneven breaths gusting against Bruce’s skin.

“We’re together again. You found me. You got me out,” Bruce reminds him softly. “You did so well, Jay. We’ll never be apart again. I promise, I promise.”

“I missed you, Bruce, I missed you.”

They stay like that, tucked close together, until the collar of Bruce’s shirt is damp with tears and the tremors running throughout Jerome’s body begin to fade.

“I’m here,” Bruce says, pressing a kiss to Jerome’s temple before pulling back. “I’m here, and I love you, and I’m going to take care of you, too.”

Jerome laughs softly.

“I know you will.”

They get out of the car. They make their way inside the gated entrance of a nondescript, three story building and Bruce honestly can’t tell if the people standing on guard inside are Maniax without the usual cosmetic indicators of blackened eyes and red smiles. They’re standing rigidly straight and expressionless, and don’t seem to react to Jerome walking past them; organized and orderly in a way that the Maniax had never been before. It’s strange, but not strange enough to capture Bruce’s attention for longer than a few seconds.

He’ll get answers later. He doesn’t need answers now.

All he needs right now is within easy reach of him for the first time in over a year.

Jerome pulls out a key and unlocks the door to a loft apartment, and when it locks behind them and Jerome leads him further inside Bruce feels—

Safe. He was always safest when he was with Jerome. 

He hopes that Jerome feels safe, too. He needs Jerome to feel safe, too. They’re safe together. Unstoppable. Unbeatable. Bruce isn’t ever going to be taken away again and Jerome isn’t either. Bruce would do _anything_ to make sure that they stayed together. 

Jerome leads him past a decorative room divider. Bruce spies a bed, and Jerome looks so tired, and Bruce wants to hold him.

“You look tired, Jay,” Bruce says again, grabbing onto his hands and tugging him towards the bed. “You worked so hard. You did so well. I love you so much.” They settle on top of the covers, facing each other. Their arms lock around each other in a familiar way. “Let’s stay like this for a while,” Bruce murmurs, tucking his head underneath Jerome’s chin. “Just like this. Together.”

“Just like this,” Jerome repeats, arms guiding Bruce closer. “Stay with me until I wake up? If I—If I wake up and you’re not here—”

“I’ll stay, of course I’ll stay. I’ll be right here, Jerome. I wouldn’t leave, not for anything.”

Jerome presses a kiss to the crown of his head. Bruce shuts his eyes and inhales the scent of him.

He’d slept fitfully the previous night, too excited by the ending of the countdown to completely settle, and being wrapped up in Jerome’s arms makes it easy to slip into a blessedly dreamless sleep. In one breath he is gone, and in another he is back again, late afternoon sun streaming through the windows. He tucks his face further into Jerome’s neck, gently kissing the skin there, and he hears a soft laugh.

“I dreamt of this, while you were gone,” Jerome tells him under his breath. “I dreamt of you.”

“Jay,” Bruce whispers. He presses another kiss to the skin laid out before his mouth before he pulls back far enough that he can see Jerome’s face. His half-open eyes and sleepy smile tug at the tenderest parts of Bruce’s heart. “I thought about you every day. Sometimes—sometimes I’d catch myself touching my scars, even though there was always a chance of someone seeing and knowing exactly what I was doing.” Each one had been clinically catalogued when he’d first arrived; every little place where Jerome had broken skin, they knew about. “And I’d daydream about you. I felt so lonely, and I knew that—” Jerome’s hand comes up between them, his thumb gently tracing the faint, slight extension of Bruce’s mouth. His bright eyes scan over Bruce’s face, committing the sight of him to memory. “I knew that you were missing me, too. But I remembered that just like how I had your mark while I was missing you, you had my mark while you were missing me. Remembering that, on the worst days, made things slightly more bearable.”

“It was the same for me.” Jerome’s thumb continues to stroke along the scar, and Bruce turns his face to press a kiss against the pad of it. “Sometimes I wanted to re-trace it so that it wasn’t so faded, but I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want it to not look like your mark anymore. It was all I had left of you, I couldn’t bear the thought of messing it up.”

“I can do it for you.” Bruce shifts forward, pressing a kiss to Jerome’s mouth. “I won’t let it fade away, Jerome. Matching marks, because we’re each other’s.” His fingers gently wind into coppery hair. “You can re-trace mine, too.”

“Bruce.” Jerome’s hands trace up and down his back. Jerome’s lips skim across Bruce’s cheeks and jaw. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Jerome.” He kisses Jerome, heart finally on the mend after too-long being shattered to pieces. “I want to wake up with you like this every day.”

“Good, because that’s what I want, too.” Jerome laughs softly, happily, against Bruce’s mouth. “You hungry? I kidnapped you before breakfast and, not to toot my own horn, but I’ve learned how to make a mean omelet and a passable cup of coffee. I’ll even make it with love so that it tastes better.”

“You make the omelets, I’ll make the coffee.” Bruce presses a smiling kiss to Jerome’s cheek. “I’ll make it with love, so it’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”

“Look at us, getting all domestic,” Jerome chimes, reaching out to run a hand through Bruce’s hair. “Who would have thought?”

“No one would have thought; definitely not me at the beginning of it all. Sometimes you seemed more interested in making me want to fight you than actually trying to win me over.”

“Not me, either. Not at the very start,” Jerome admits. “Guess that’s what happens when infatuation turns into something sustainable, huh?”

“I guess so,” Bruce answers softly.

They do, eventually, roll out of bed. 

Conversation is kept purposefully light as they go about their tasks in the kitchen, not delving into history more than a week old. Jerome had arrived here a few days ago, his handwritten countdown—a month’s worth of numbers, since he couldn’t be sure when that one particular nurse would have Bruce as a patient—had been passed along a chain of people like in a game of telephone until it landed in the hands of the nurse. He’d spent most of his time here pacing the length of the hallway, which Bruce could envision almost too easily—a wild animal waiting to be set loose, knowing its time was coming—and making sure every piece was precisely in place between micro-naps on the couch.

“Wasn’t sure if when I picked you up you’d been in some kind of uniform that’d make it easier for the people here to recognize escapees. Guess you get to pay a premium not to wear the black and white stripes, huh?” He chuckles when Bruce pulls a face, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “I brought along some clothes for you so that you wouldn’t look like a jail-bird, just in case.”

“It wasn’t a jail,” Bruce protests weakly, though at times it had certainly felt an awful lot like it. “But I appreciate the forethought. Although I suppose if you hadn’t brought along clothes for me I’d just wear yours.”

Jerome goes still, then hums, overly-thoughtful, before he slowly turns in order to look Bruce up and down in the least subtle way possible. 

“Well,” he drawls. “You could still do that anyway, if you want.”

“You’re an incorrigible flirt.”

“Only if it’s you that I’m flirting with, baby doll. I never get sick of the looks you send me, whether they’re dry as dust or all flushed and embarrassed.”

“Jerome, if you don’t pay attention to the eggs they’re going to burn.” 

Jerome snorts and wraps an arm around Bruce’s shoulders before he turns his attention back to the pan. They finish and eat and clean up together, and Bruce can feel the lingering tension—the persisting worry of being caught even though he and Jerome were safest together—begin to melt away. Later, when Bruce is washing his face in the bathroom sink, he spies two toothbrushes in a cup and something about that—as small as it may be—delights him to the point where he almost starts crying happy tears all over again. When he exits to find Jerome looming outside the bathroom door, as if not able to bear more than a few feet of space between them at any time, Bruce cannot resist the urge to kiss him. 

It doesn’t take long for them to tumble into bed together again, despite the fact that they’d only been out of bed for an hour. 

Bruce’s hands dig into red hair, Jerome’s hands on his back pull him closer. They fit together like they were meant to be; dangerous edges tempered by matching hollows. Jerome’s leg slides between his knees and Bruce’s breath catches as heat sparks inside of him, just like it had in the van hours earlier. 

“Is this okay?” Jerome asks against his mouth, body going still. “You don’t—we don’t actually have to do anything. It’s just that towards the end I felt like I was forgetting what you looked like in real life. The way light would hit your eyes, the way you would smile, the way you would move. Like I was forgetting the touch of your hands and the smell of you and the taste of your skin and everything else.”

“It’s okay.” Bruce’s hands trail down, skimming over Jerome’s neck and chest, slipping up underneath his shirt to lay upon his abdomen. “It’s perfect. We can remember it all together. We have time, Jerome. We have all the time in the world.”

He feels the shaking in Jerome’s exhalation, in the touch of his fingers, and he wonders the likelihood of them both dissolving into tears again as they advance. Shirts are slowly lifted, inch by inch between lingering kisses, to be tossed aside. Jerome’s fingers trace up and down his spine as he presses kisses to Bruce’s collar bones, to his shoulders, to his sternum, while Bruce’s nails lightly graze through the spattering of hair on Jerome’s chest and down, down, to the thin trail that disappears below the waistband of his pants. They shift, Bruce settling on his back, and Jerome presses another kiss to his stomach as his fingers slip between fabric and skin and pull down slightly. He pulls back, eyes riveted to the skin that had, until now, been hidden.

Jerome’s fingertips trace, feather-light and devout, against the scar on Bruce’s hip before he ducks down to press his lips to it. 

“I missed you so much, Bruce,” he whispers against skin.

“I know, I know.” Bruce’s hands scrabble against his shoulders, urging him upwards. “I missed you too.”

When they kiss again, hands haphazardly working at divesting themselves of the rest of their clothes, it feels electric. When Jerome’s hands settle on his bare hips Bruce can feel himself grow warm and thrilled, heart racing behind his ribs. When his hand follows that trail of hair down, down, he can feel Jerome shudder and jerk before they’re kissing again, hot and slick and perfect even if they only seem to grow more uncoordinated the more they touch each other; finesse taking a backseat to a desperate passion that had been lying in wait for too long, too long, too long. 

It is right and it is everything and it is _them, together, how they should have been and how they should always be_. Bruce’s thumb presses into the faint scar on Jerome’s hip and Jerome’s cock settles heavily against his own and—fervent and wanting and too impatient after so long of waiting and longing to be reunited for any more buildup—Bruce wraps his legs around Jerome’s hips and grinds up against him, fingers digging harder in red hair, face pressed firmly into the crook of Jerome’s neck. 

They both wind up tight, restless and without hesitation. Bruce’s face is hot and his eyes are stinging but Jerome’s arms are around him and his lips are pressing against Bruce’s temple and hairline, and when Bruce feels himself start to shake his teeth graze against Jerome’s neck and Jerome’s entire body jolts, pressing Bruce hard against the mattress as the building pressure inside of him releases.

“I love you, I love you,” he says, face still pressed in Jerome’s neck, hands still dug into Jerome’s hair. He bites, not hard enough to bleed, not even hard enough to hurt, but above him Jerome goes tense and lax and tense again, a second rush of wet heat splattering against Bruce’s stomach. They lie still, catching their breath, for several long moments before Jerome lifts himself up on his hands and Bruce finally untucks his face from his neck.

They gaze at each other. Words catch in Bruce’s throat and he belatedly realizes that if Jerome says anything remotely profound right now he really is going to start crying all over again. Maybe Jerome can tell, or maybe he’ll start all over again, too, because thankfully the first thing out of his mouth is:

“Wanna shower together?”

And instead of crying Bruce laughs while Jerome dramatically tumbles to the mattress to lay beside him. 

“Let’s stay like this a little while longer,” Bruce suggests, lips skimming against Jerome’s jaw. “There’s no rush. We have all the time in the world to remember everything together.” How it felt to hold and be held, how it felt to kiss and be kissed, how it felt to bite and be bitten. Everything and anything and things they hadn’t even attempted before. They have time. They have each other. Now that they’re together again nothing is going to be able to separate them, Bruce is sure of it. 

“I missed you,” Jerome says again, and Bruce presses closer to him. 

“In a perfect world we wouldn’t have the opportunity to miss each other,” Bruce tells him lowly. In a perfect world Bruce would have never been taken away. In a perfect world Bruce thinks that they would have met sooner. “That’s as good a reason as any to make the world perfect.” Because neither of them would be able to stand a separation like this ever happening again. “Or at least to make Gotham perfect.” Because once Bruce is home he never wants to leave again. His entire world—his heart, his soul—would be encased within the borders of his city. 

“What is a perfect Gotham supposed to be like?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet.” Bruce holds Jerome’s hand tight. “Except for the fact that I’d always be with you.”

Jerome holds him back and smiles, bringing Bruce’s hand up to his mouth in order to press a kiss to his knuckles.

After more than a year of being derailed, destiny is clicking back into place.

“That’s my perfect Gotham, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Don't know if I will have The Energy required to respond to comments individually BUT:  
> I am delighted that people have enjoyed this series as much as they have! Knowing how much love these two are getting really does tend to spur me on! I did not at all plan for this to go on for as long as it did, but I've had so much fun with it. Thank you for the continued support! I adore you all. :)  
> Much love. Stay safe.


End file.
